Final Story

Two people lay on the wet grass of the Civic Center Plaza. Pigeons flew throughout the foggy sky. A grocery cart piled with black plastic bags and three rows of Little Red Flowers housed the men in their slumber.
Meanwhile, men and women in heavy jackets who hold fanny bags around their waists and hang cameras on their necks take pictures of each other in front of City Hall.
“They take one-hundred thousand pictures everyday,” snickered a scrawny man as he adjusted a worn-out San Francisco 49ers hat and lit a cigarette.
Van Ness Avenue, California, Market, and Leavenworth streets enclose many of San Francisco’s largest government and cultural buildings. Some people think of the Civic Center as a place for protests and festivities only. The truth is that when one listens to the people—the homeless, vendors, tourists, workers, and residents— one sees in them the reflection of a diverse and complex community. To say it’s the homeless, or the city’s supervisors, or the flee markets that depict the Civic Center is an illustration of a limited observation.
Jose and Bertha Yepez emigrated from Mexico and have been living in a neighborhood that lies to the west of the Civic Center for fifteen years—the Tenderloin.
Bertha Yepez said the “hazardous” conditions of the Civic Center’s playground have forced her to take her 5-year-old son to Yerba Buena Gardens where he can enjoy a “safe and clean park.” The playground in the Civic Center, which the neighborhood’s
own residents don’t know its name, has trash and pieces of broken glass under the swings.
“San Francisco is a beautiful city,” Jose Yepez said. “But the people in City Hall close their eyes to issues affecting the up-bringing of our children.”
According to the Yepez couple, this year’s Love Fest, which is a festival that includes floats and techno music that occurs annually in San Francisco, exceeded its limits.
“We’re not against the festivities,” Bertha Yepez affirmed. “My participation has always been optional, but this year, two naked women were outside of the event’s boundaries. That’s disrespectful.”
Bertha said the police arrived too late to McAllister and Fulton streets, where the women had been exposing themselves. “I hope the city sets stricter rules next year,” she said.
Betina Cordova, also from the Tenderloin, said she’s been living in the neighborhood and has been walking through the United Nations and Civic Center plazas to arrive to work for the past five years.
“The media exaggerates,” she said. “Shooting, stabbings, and violence from the homeless don’t happen every hour of every day.”
Cordova said she has noticed a decreased number of tourists in the Civic Center at later hours. “When the media focuses on the violence in these neighborhoods,” she said referring to the Tenderloin and the Civic Center, “People are afraid to come. They have a bad image of our community.”
However, a group of nine men and women tourists from China, who declined to give their first and last names, felt differently.
“Nothing here frightens us,” said the only man in the group who spoke English as he took a picture of the Simon Bolivar equestrian statue. “We come to San Francisco for nine days. The Civic Center is our first stop and the people are very nice.”
Cordova also believes that people who are new to the neighborhoods have a distorted image of the homeless who sleep and spend their waking hours in the streets of the Civic Center and the Tenderloin.
According to Cordova, the homeless men and women who find shelter in the plazas aren’t dangerous. She said most of the homeless keep to themselves, in fact, she said that throughout the five years she’s walked through the Civic Center, familiar faces welcome her with a ‘hello’ and a smile every morning, and wish her a good night at 10’ O clock, when she’s walking back to her apartment.
“A lot of the homeless are consumed in their loneliness and frustration,” Cordova said, “They just want to be left alone.” Cordova remembers seeing two of her neighbors
sleeping next to the Asian Art Museum after they lost their jobs and couldn’t afford to pay for rent.
Tom Jackson, one of Supervisor Chris Daly’s aides, said, “Well, there isn’t a lot of open space in such dense city. Of course a place like Civic Center is going to have people lying on the grass.”
Jackson said no complaints regarding the homeless in the plazas or in the “blue and yellow” playground have been reported to neither he nor Daly during his four months in office.
“Not every person resting in the plazas is homeless,” Jackson said, “There will be details that give them away,” he continued. According to Jackson, it’s obvious that the homeless will “want” to “hang out” in the area where most of the homeless health and shelter services are located.
According to a San Francisco Chronicle story written by C.W. Nevius, San Francisco spends a reported $100 million a year on its homeless population. In the same story, Kate Shuten, a public health nurse who has worked with the homeless in the city’s shelters, said many of the homeless men and women would rather live outside than in one of the downtown “crack” hotels.
“They [homeless] tell stories of people climbing through their windows, assaulting them, stealing their stuff, and even raping them,” Shuten said.

Jackson didn’t comment when asked to confirm that every one of the homeless “hanging out” in the plazas lived in one of the shelters that the city offers.
However, the plazas in the Civic Center are not solely inhibited by the homeless and don’t only illustrate the extreme poverty that exists in the community. The vendors in the plazas and their customers are an expression of the neighborhood’s grandeur and vitality that attracts San Franciscans and people from other Northern California cities alike.
For example, the United Nations Plaza, which extends from Market to Hyde streets, is home to the Heart of the City Farmers Market every Wednesday and Sunday. Youmna Yassad, from the Hayes Valley, says “the produce is more cheap and fresh” compared to the rest. Oranges, grapes, orchids, and fresh bouquets of flowers adorn the wooden tables that border the United Nations Plaza.
Adrian Alatorre from Modesto, an enthusiastic and avid 28-year-old vendor for Mora Farms who also works at the farmers market in Palo Alto and Daly City, said the market in the Civic Center has high- potential because it attracts a diverse range of people.
“I love the diversity of people in this neighborhood and the weather is a nice change,” he said about the Civic Center. “I’m thinking about living here while the farmers market closes for the season.”
On 7th and Market streets, the smell of Chinese and Japanese cuisine that diffuses from the Oriental Restaurant and the Oasis Barbeque Grill welcomes commuters who arrive from the Civic Center Muni and Bart stations.